Why did the Atal
Bihari Vajpayee government prove to be such a comprehensive failure? Why did the
Bharatiya Janata Party, the so-called "party with a difference" that promised to
provide "a viable alternative", falter so badly once in power? Why after every
scandal did the BJP leaders brazenly argue that "Congress did the same thing"
and that "their scam was bigger than ours"? Failing the Promise probes
such questions.

The book indicts the
Vajpayee government for failing its promise of effecting fundamental change.
More than the so-called compulsions of coalition politics, the author holds the
real reason to be a lack of conviction on the part of Vajpayee and his
colleagues. Theirs was a mandate for a change of regime, and not merely of
government but the first-ever Indian Right-wing formation in power failed to
alter the grammar of politics and the idiom of public discourse. Its major
failings include:

Failure to provide good governance;

Failure to take tough decisions out of a morbid
and debilitating fear of repercussions;

An approach of appeasement on various
contentious issues rather than upholding justice;

An inability to break free of the tyranny of
conventional wisdom.

Faliure to carry through real economic reforms.

Generally, it is the
Left-libbers who deprecate BJP for communalizing India’s education system,
supporting fascist tendencies, and spreading jingoism. But Ravi Shanker Kapoor,
a self-confessed conservative, severely criticizes the Parivar for diluting its
political agenda and for blindly internalizing the economic philosophy of the
Left. Failing the Promise is a damning critique of both the Indian Right
and Vajpayee and his men from a conservative perspective, both meaty and
readable.

Ravi Shanker Kapoor

Ravi Shanker Kapoordid BA
(Hons)
Mathematics from Hansraj College, Delhi University, in 1985. He has worked with
The Asian Age, The Financial Express, and MetroNow.

He is the first self-proclaimed conservative of India. As a
member of the Centre for National Renaissance, he started www.indiaright.org,
India's first conservative website. He has written two other hard-hitting books,
More Equal Than Others: A Study of the Indian Left and Failing the
Promise: Irrelevance of the Vajpayee Government.